G.I.'s Fight Afghan Devastation With Plaster and Nails

By JAMES DAO

Published: June 24, 2002

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan—
The tittering fifth-grade girls in their black uniforms and white head scarves swarmed about the American Special Forces soldiers, elbowing each other to get closer. They all wanted to see the men who had fixed their school.

A few years ago Taliban soldiers closed and gutted the complex, stealing bricks and burning door frames for firewood. But this spring an Army civil affairs team arrived with a satchel full of dollars, paying $16,000 to local workers to install new windows, doors and desks, repair ceilings and apply a fresh coat of robin's-egg blue paint.

''Before, it wasn't fit for a donkey,'' said Muhammad Taheer, proud administrator of the Bi Bi Khadija Tol Kobra school for 4,000 girls, grades 1 through 12. ''Now look at it.''

The soldiers in the northern city of Kunduz are on the front lines of a different kind of war, one fought not with guns or bombs, but plaster, nails and cold, hard American cash.

Along with seven other civil affairs teams across Afghanistan, they have been working with local officials and warlords to reconstruct schools, hospitals, roads and water systems ruined by two decades of war, some by American bombs last fall.

Though the soldiers refrain from calling their activities ''nation building,'' in war-scarred Afghanistan the distinction is easily lost.

''We want an immediate peace dividend,'' said Lt. Col. Roland F. de Marcellus, commander of the 489th Civil Affairs Battalion, based in Knoxville, Tenn., which has 120 soldiers in Afghanistan.

The teams are not spending lavishly -- about $8 million this year for the entire country -- and have had to turn down many of the large-scale projects Afghan officials are begging for, like major road and bridge repairs. But in six months the teams have completed nearly two dozen smaller projects, many in remote regions where banditry or bad roads have limited the work of private relief groups.

In the process they have put money into the pockets of thousands of impoverished Afghan workers, returned a slice of normalcy to a few communities and purchased, at a bargain price, good will toward the United States. That will be a vital commodity if the Pentagon keeps troops here for an extended period.

''We'd be happy if they stay for a long time,'' said Abdul Rasool, a construction contractor in Kunduz. ''They fix our buildings. They rebuild our city. They solve our problems.''

But the work of the civil affairs teams has not received universal acclaim, receving the cold shoulder from some international aid organizations with which the teams hoped to collaborate. Those aid groups say the civil affairs teams have blurred the lines separating private from military programs, placing civilians at risk from Afghans angry with American soldiers.

''They worry that people will be confused,'' said Dr. Mohammed Shafiq Mirzazada, an officer with the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group for 68 aid organizations. ''There are people who supported the Taliban who hate the American military.''

Some Afghan officials and Western analysts have also asserted that the civil affairs teams work too closely with local warlords, fostering the perception that regional commanders, not the central government in Kabul, are the major dispensers of patronage and power in Afghanistan.

In Kunduz, Gen. Daoud Khan, a local commander from the Northern Alliance, supplies the local team with security guards, translators and much advice about projects. In Bagram, the civil affairs team has hired a local commander, Gen. Baba Jan, as the lead contractor on projects. In Herat, Ismael Khan presses the local team to finance his pet road, bridge and water projects -- though American officials say his input is purely advisory.

Civil affairs officers say they try to promote the central government by posting signs outside work sites advertising the Afghan government's role in projects. But they acknowledge that local warlords share some of the credit.

''If you are rebuilding a school, you are helping both the central government and the local government,'' Colonel de Marcellus said. ''But it's not like we're trying to equip a local army. When you are educating little girls, it's motherhood and apple pie. Or kabab, as the case may be.''

Most civil affairs soldiers now in Afghanistan are reservists, who the Pentagon says are more adept at working with civilians.

The leader of the Kunduz team, Maj. Phil Williams, 37, is a third-year law student in Birmingham, Ala., while his second in command, Capt. William Mandrick, 36, is in a doctoral program in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Other teams include doctors, teachers, police officers and college students.

The teams, which typically have fewer than a dozen soldiers, have tried to blend into the local community by wearing Afghan-style scarves and civilian clothes, beards and longish hair. Most live in houses rather than military bases, and many routinely eat traditional Afghan meals of grilled meat and rice.

But they still stand out, wearing pistols strapped to their thighs and bulky bulletproof vests, and traveling with armed Afghan bodyguards. At the behest of superiors, many have trimmed their beads and started wearing military camouflage pants to distinguish them from civilian aid workers. For security reasons they seldom stroll through the streets anymore. When they do, they attract huge crowds.

Amid constant warnings of terrorism, they are also wary of most people they meet. After an Afghan man recently visited the Kunduz team's compound to propose some joint projects, Major Williams mused, ''Until I check him out, how can I be sure he isn't Al Qaeda scoping out my compound?

''But if he checks out, I'd love to work with him. What's the saying? Give a man a fish and he will have a meal. Teach him to fish and he'll feed himself for a lifetime.''

The soldiers have barely scratched the surface of Kunduz's needs. The electricity supply is erratic, the central water system is not functioning, the airport is surrounded by land mines and the main road south is so rutted that it is barely passable.

Such projects, expensive and difficult, will be the true test of whether the the outside world can help rebuild Afghanistan. Chances are that most will be started by civilian aid groups or the United Nations long after the civil affairs teams have moved on to the next battle zone.